Wednesday, January 25, 2017

"England and America are two countries divided by a common language." Before the U.S. Navy took a close look at postwar Royal Navy innovations like the steam catapult, angled deck, and mirror landing system and adopted them, it pursued a very independent course in developing aircraft carrier operations. This is a brilliant 1946 Royal Navy training film focused on the deck-landing phase of carrier flying: https://youtu.be/qxtXDDShjGs

No mention is made of difficulty landing them, although in the first landing shown, the pilot does appear to be skidding a bit in the groove to maintain sight of the DLCO.

The film also includes clips of the first jet landing (British, as were most carrier firsts) and the unusual position of the DLCO when waving the twin-engine Mosquito, necessitated by the need to not be hidden from the pilot's view by the engine nacelle:

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In 1956, at age 12, I lived on NAS Sangley Point in the Philippine Islands. Always enamored with airplanes, I imprinted on the Cougars, Banshees, and Skyraiders then being deployed. Not able to be a Naval Aviator because I was nearsighted, I instead became an aeronautical engineer and general aviation pilot. Now retired, I write books and monographs on U.S. Navy aircraft.